On p. 99 of Confronting the Bomb, the reader will discover a relatively obscure, but important, battle in the early 1960s between independent peace organizations and Communist-dominated peace organizations for control of the worldwide campaign against nuclear weapons.

Most of the rest of the book recounts the history of this worldwide campaign and its remarkable impact.

Ever since the explosion of the first atomic bombs in 1945, there had been widespread popular anxiety about nuclear weapons. This anxiety reached peaks of intensity in the late 1940s, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as vast protest campaigns emerged around the demand for banning nuclear weapons. With millions of participants, this public challenge to the nuclear ambitions of the great powers and their imitators became the largest social movement of modern times.

Based on massive research in the files of peace groups and in previously top secret government records, as well as on interviews with peace movement leaders and government officials, Confronting the Bomb provides a comprehensive account of this worldwide nuclear disarmament campaign.

It also provides conclusive evidence that the movement provided the key element in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war.

The material in Confronting the Bomb was first made public in the author's scholarly, award-winning trilogy, "The Struggle Against the Bomb" (1993, 1997, 2003). But now, for the first time, it is presented in a short, popular form, making it much more accessible to the general public.